5 Ways Artificial Intelligence Impacts Marketing & ROI

Throughout 2017 we saw how the enterprises have started taking Artificial Intelligence(AI) seriously, but even so, they are still yet to explore how to use it in their strategy activities and campaigns. This is eventually changing in 2018 as most of the enterprises have started taking steps to make AI a must-have in their strategy. Even a report from Gartner states that by 2020, 85% of the customer interactions will be managed without humans. This just goes to show how important AI is going to become in the coming times and those who leverage it will have a serious advantage over others.

Data Scientists and Engineers that are working on AI are pushing themselves hard to create AI systems that learn intrinsic nature, language, and emotions so that they comprehend everything and predict behaviour and possible activities. With the introduction of AI in the technology stack, marketing strategy is bound to get a strong push in multiple ways. Here are 5 ways AI will boost marketing and significantly impact ROI:

1. Smart Searches: With the arrival of social media and intelligent search engines, consumers have become quite efficient in leveraging these tools to their benefits. They have access to vast information and it is difficult to understand their search patterns for better content optimization. This is where AI comes in-by quickly learning the search behaviour of customers, SEO and social media strategy can be improved for smart content delivery and better results. Adding to this with the arrival of voice assistants, it is imperative that voice search patterns be analyzed to understand how they affect smart searches. The more information, the easier it is to optimize content and make it available for end consumers.

2. Intelligent Marketing: AI systems are well equipped in automatically sorting and analyzing big data coming from different sources-be it CRM, social media, customer support, offline or any data source for that matter-and are frequently being updated and improved for the marketers to compile all the information and powerful customer segmentation.

When it comes to large-scale advertising campaigns, AI can help marketers find innovative ways to optimize ad layout, content, placement, targeting and bids. This will not only result in more effective campaigns but also will reach out to people like the segment created. According to this report by Everage, 63% of marketers who participated in the survey mentioned increased conversion rates and 61% noted improved customer experiences. In addition to the marketing campaigns, AI can also suggest you to fresh content that your audience is mostly like to engage with.

3. Automated Customer Support: The idea of human-level AI systems is becoming a reality. Enterprises have started taking a step toward making chatbots and voice assistants a part of their digital strategy. Traditional customer support will soon become obsolete as the means of communication usually includes email or telephone support for which people have to deal with the IVR system that gets on people’s nerves more often than not. Customers are now favouring brands that support automated bots for painless resolution. According to Juniper Research, Chatbots will be responsible for cost savings of over $8 billion annually by 2022, up from $20 million in 2017. Of course, it all depends on how well the bots are trained but after they are ready, expect them to extract delight out of every customer that interacts with them. Not only it will help increase customer experience but also will boost loyalty among customers.

4. Churn Prevention: Churn of a loyal or cream customer is one of the biggest losses for any enterprise. Reason for churn can be anything-a competitor offering a better deal or service or the customer is unhappy with the brand they are already associated with. AI powered tools work on the historical data, create a predictive model and forecast churn behaviour of the customers. While those customers whose data is not enough, that is who churn quickly, are difficult to retain, the relatively old customers who have been associated with the enterprise for some time can be incentivized as soon as they smell of churn. When combined with personalized content, AI powered churn predictive model will eventually lead to better customer retention, higher customer lifetime value, and profits. In the times, when the cost of user acquisition is skyrocketing, a smart move is to invest in tools that help in retaining existing customers and maintain brand value.

5. Smart Content Creation: Most marketers rely on content marketing when it comes to creating a demand or nurturing a prospect or enabling sales for upsell/cross-sell. However hard they may try to create buyer personas or for market research or for content that converts, it is extremely difficult to expect consistent results from each campaign. According to eMarketer, more than 60% marketers would like to leverage AI in content marketing. The usage includes predicting what consumers would like to read next, creating more accurate buyer personas, content creation and optimization according to customer preference. By 2018, Gartner predicts, 20% of all business content will be authored by machines. Adding to this, Natural Language Processing(NLP), one of the prominent AI techniques, helps content marketers to serve more relevant content to the relevant people for better results.

AI has arrived and is here to stay. Not only it is enabling marketers to convert ideas into reality but also is empowering them to connect with the customers in a way which was considered almost impossible so far. While this technology may appear to be consuming more resources or needing big investments at first, gradually when it is implemented and authorized to produce results, the ROI is going to be huge. It is safe to say that the brands with AI will clearly have a massive advantage over their competitors lacking this technology. If you would like to understand how AI can help your business with the verticalized solution and use cases, just reach out to us via this form and we will be happy to get in touch with you.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors’ and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house. Unless otherwise noted, the author is writing in his/her personal capacity. They are not intended and should not be thought to represent official ideas, attitudes, or policies of any agency or institution.